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209 stories in the last 30d

FrostyGoop’s Zoom-In: A Closer Look into the Malware Artifacts, Behaviors and Network Communications

Unit 42 dissects FrostyGoop OT malware, which sent Modbus TCP commands to disrupt heating for 600+ apartment buildings in Ukraine.

Palo Alto Unit 42 analyzed new FrostyGoop/BUSTLEBERM samples, the ninth known ICS-centric malware, first used against a Ukrainian municipal energy company by sending Modbus TCP commands to ENCO control devices. The attack caused a two-day heating outage affecting over 600 apartment buildings during sub-zero temperatures. The Go-compiled malware accepts Modbus register operations and timing parameters via command-line arguments or a JSON configuration file, uses an obscure open-source Modbus library, and checks the Windows BeingDebugged flag to evade debuggers. Unit 42 telemetry recorded over 1 million Modbus TCP devices exposed to the internet between September and October 2024.

Palo Alto Unit 42 · 28d agoMalware in the wild

Most Fraudulent Hires Receive Credentials Before Detection

HYPR report finds 42% of fraudulent hires pass screening and receive corporate credentials, averaging 5.73 days of unmonitored network access before detection.

A HYPR study of 500 US HR executives found 42% of fraudulent candidates pass pre-hire screening and get hired, with only 3% detected on their hire day and 20% remaining undetected up to three weeks. This gives fraudulent hires an average of 5.73 days of unmonitored corporate network access, and 98% of surveyed executives said they had experienced candidate fraud firsthand. The report follows a September 9 CISA update to its Insider Threat Mitigation Guide warning that malicious actors use AI tools to obtain remote IT jobs, a tactic long used by North Korean actors for data theft and extortion.

Infosecurity Magazine · 1d agoPhishing & fraud

China-Based Artificial Intelligence Companies Conducting Industrial-Scale Distillation Campaigns Against U.S. AI Companies

NSA, CISA, and FBI warn DeepSeek, Alibaba, and other Chinese AI firms ran industrial-scale distillation of U.S. frontier models, threatening U.S. AI leadership.

A joint NSA, CISA, and FBI Cybersecurity Advisory (AA26-251A) says China-based firms DeepSeek, Moonshot AI, Alibaba, MiniMax, StepFun, and Z.AI extracted billions of tokens from U.S. frontier models including Claude, GPT, Gemini, and Grok, likely with Chinese government knowledge. Campaigns running since at least late 2024 used native APIs, cloud providers, third-party aggregators, gray-market proxy "transfer stations", and shared premium subscriptions to bypass geographic restrictions, evade safeguards, and violate providers' terms of use. The agencies recommend detecting anomalous prompts, accounts, and usage patterns; subtly altering responses to suspected distillers; and cross-organization intelligence sharing. They also call DeepSeek's publicly cited $5.6M training cost misleading because it excludes data acquired through distillation.

CISA Advisories · 8d agoAdvisory in the wild1

ASCII smuggling crosses over from AI prompt injection to phishing evasion

Microsoft details high-volume phishing campaign using ASCII smuggling (Unicode tag chars) for filter evasion, peaking at 2.3M messages.

Microsoft researchers observed a high-volume finance-themed phishing campaign using invisible Unicode tag characters (U+E0000–U+E007F), a technique known from AI prompt injection research as ASCII smuggling, to split lure words like 'funding' and evade email filters. Telemetry from Microsoft Defender for Office 365 showed signature hits jump from roughly 21,000 messages on February 8, 2026 to more than 1.3 million on February 9, peaking above 2.3 million on February 11, with elevated weekday activity lasting approximately three months. The discovery emerged from prompt injection protection research, showing AI-era evasion techniques crossing into traditional phishing. Most messages were flagged by layered Defender protections rather than a single Unicode-specific signal.

Microsoft Security Blog · 13d agoPhishing & fraud in the wild1

Gigabud Uses Android App Cloning to Evade Fraud Detection

Group-IB reports the Gigabud Android banking trojan clones bank apps into isolated work profiles via the Vwork tool to evade fraud detection, with roughly $960,000 in losses in Indonesia.

Group-IB found Gigabud now ships dedicated code to work with Vwork, a weaponized fork of the open-source Android cloning app Shelter it attributes to GoldFactory, exposing cloning functions so any installed app can call them. After installing via phishing sites and messengers posing as airline, tax and government apps, operators request accessibility and overlay permissions, then clone the victim's banking app into a new work profile where it is invisible to signature-based detection in the personal profile. Fake login screens and overlays capture credentials while cloned-app transactions appear to banks as coming from an unrecognized, malware-free device. Between February and July 2026 in Indonesia, Group-IB observed about 1,469 compromised devices, 1,281 potentially compromised logins and estimated losses of roughly $960,939, with Vwork-enabled samples targeting 11 countries including Brazil, Mexico, Egypt and Thailand.

Infosecurity Magazine · 7d agoMalware in the wild

Meta Failed to Catch Hundreds of AI Child Abuse Ads. Some Included Images of Real Kids

Meta's AI ad-detection failed to catch 350+ CSAM video ads on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads, some depicting images of real children.

The Tech Transparency Project found over 250 additional ads containing child sexual abuse material on Meta platforms since August, on top of ~53 previously removed, exceeding 350 total since late last year. Some ads used images of real children, including a European royal family minor and teen influencers, morphed into graphic sexual videos via AI face-swapping. Ads linked to nudification apps from Chinese developers and reached over 29,000 EU accounts plus thousands in the US, UK, Australia, and India.

WIRED · Security · 8d agoAI safety & security

Hackers Clone Banking Apps Into Hidden Android Work Profiles to Evade Fraud Detection

GoldFactory-linked Gigabud and Vwork malware clone banking apps into hidden Android work profiles to evade fraud detection across 11+ countries.

Group-IB links Vwork, a modified version of the open-source Shelter app cloner, to the GoldFactory group and its Gigabud Android RAT, which clones victim banking apps into an isolated work profile so fraud sessions look clean to banks. From February through July 2026, researchers observed about 1,469 compromised devices and 1,281 potentially compromised logins in Indonesia, with estimated losses near $960,939. Targets span Brazil, Colombia, Egypt, Indonesia, Mexico, Morocco, the Philippines, Thailand, Türkiye, Laos, and a GCC state; delivery uses fake airline, tax, government, and banking apps pushed via phishing sites, messaging apps, and social media.

Cyber Security News · 7d agoMalware in the wild

Casbaneiro Banking Trojan Uses Distributed C2 Servers to Evade Detection and Target Bank Users

Casbaneiro banking Trojan targets Latin American bank users via phishing PDFs, geofencing, AutoIt staging, and distributed C2 servers to evade detection.

FortiGuard Labs detailed a Casbaneiro banking Trojan campaign observed in August 2026 targeting users in Argentina, Peru, Colombia, and Mexico via fake invoice and legal-notice emails. The operation uses geofenced landing pages, an HTA downloader with WMI-based sandbox checks, a legitimate AutoIt interpreter, and process injection into RegSvcs.exe (fallback mobsync.exe). C2 activation is conditional on victims visiting banking websites, enabling keyboard control, clipboard manipulation, and fake overlay windows for bank-focused fraud, while distributed exfiltration servers and unusual HTTP 403-based signaling hinder analyst correlation.

GBHackers · 2d agoMalware in the wild1

North Korean IT Workers Scheme: Detection IOCs and Tactics for Government and Corporate SOCs

ANY.RUN details the expanding North Korean IT worker infiltration scheme using forged identities and AI-assisted workflows, sharing detection IOCs for SOCs.

ANY.RUN describes how North Korean IT workers infiltrate American and European organizations using forged identities and AI-assisted workflows to become trusted insiders. The operation bypasses traditional security perimeters and has expanded beyond the private sector to government targets. The post provides detection IOCs and tactics for government and corporate SOCs.

ANY.RUN · 27d agoThreat actor

Hackers Got Inside a Flock Camera. Its Data Shows How the System Really Works

Hackers stole a Flock Safety camera, copied its storage, and recovered an encryption key exposing vehicle surveillance data and system internals.

Hackers from the collective stegan0gram removed a Flock Safety license plate reader from a roadway, copied its storage, and recovered an encryption key stored in an unencrypted partition, unlocking videos of thousands of vehicle detections. The data, shared with 404 Media, WIRED, and Distributed Denial of Secrets, shows the camera generated roughly 1.6 million images of about 50,200 vehicles over 21 days and detects people, bicycles, and bumper stickers in addition to license plates. The dump follows 2025 research by Jon 'GainSec' Gaines documenting flaws enabling root access, which Flock downplayed. Flock's national network makes camera records searchable by more than 2,000 agencies, fueling controversy over police and immigration lookups.

WIRED · Securityupdated · 7h agofirst · 18h agoData breach in the wild 3 sources

New Phishing Attack Creates Malicious Pages Inside the Victim’s Browser

Barracuda details a phishing campaign that renders pages in-browser via blob URLs, routed through Microsoft Teams and cdn.bloom[.]io to evade detection.

Barracuda researchers analyzed a phishing campaign that generates a blob URL to render the phishing page entirely inside the victim's browser, leaving no static page for scanners to inspect. The chain begins with a Docusign-themed email containing a calendar invite, followed by a crafted redirect through Microsoft Teams to a resource on cdn.bloom[.]io that the browser converts into the blob URL. Service workers, iframes, and a hidden command-and-control configuration indicate the page is part of a centrally managed phishing platform that can be updated and steered across victims. Researchers recommend inspecting blob URL activity, monitoring OAuth authorization flows, and analyzing the full click path in email security controls.

SecurityWeek · 7d agoPhishing & fraud in the wild

Inside Knight Office, a New M365 AiTM Phishing Kit

Huntress details Knight Office, a new AiTM phishing kit stealing Microsoft 365 session tokens and registering attacker-controlled devices.

Huntress investigated an August 18, 2026 adversary-in-the-middle attack using the Knight Office phishing kit, which captured Microsoft 365 session tokens via a DocuSign-style lure routed through a Monday.com tracking link and a compromised Joomla site. After token capture, the actor enrolled an unauthorized host in Microsoft Entra ID and bound a Windows Hello for Business key credential to the account. The kit's operator console, found at IP 104.37.188.94, is built on Python Flask and hosts at least 25 .vu phishing domains. Telemetry links the kit to at least nine token-replay logins in two weeks and roughly 700 reported lure emails since April.

Huntress · 14d agoPhishing & fraud in the wild1

Multiple Vulnerabilities Discovered in a SCADA System

Unit 42 details five vulnerabilities (CVSS 7.0-7.8) in ICONICS Suite SCADA software enabling privilege escalation and DoS.

Unit 42 discovered five vulnerabilities (CVE-2024-1182, CVE-2024-7587, CVE-2024-8299, CVE-2024-8300, CVE-2024-9852) in ICONICS Suite versions 10.97.2 and earlier for Windows during a 2024 security assessment. The flaws, rated CVSS 7.0-7.8, allow DLL hijacking, privilege escalation, information disclosure, denial-of-service and potentially full system compromise. ICONICS Suite is a SCADA solution with hundreds of thousands of installations in over 100 countries, widely used in critical infrastructure, and several dozen servers are internet-exposed per Unit 42 telemetry. ICONICS released patches and advisories with workarounds in 2024.

Plug 'n' Pray: Agentic LLM-based Detection of Potential Log File Exposures in Third-Party Content Management System Plugins

Agentic LLM analysis validates 79 log file exposures across 62 of the 300 most-installed WordPress plugins, covering 250M+ active installations.

Researchers built an agentic LLM-based framework combining static and dynamic analysis to automatically detect insecure log files created by WordPress plugins. Scanning the 300 most-installed plugins, which account for roughly 75% of all active installations in the official ecosystem, it produced 81 findings with 79 manually reproduced across 62 plugins. Insufficiently secured log files can disclose credentials and personal data and have led to website compromises. The authors derive a taxonomy of log path and protection patterns and best practices, finding multi-layered protection often absent.

arXiv cs.CR · 1d agoResearch

New N0va Phishkit Targets North America and EU: A Growing Identity Risk for SOCs

ANY.RUN researchers uncovered the N0va phishkit targeting government, technology, consulting, and healthcare organizations across North America and the EU via device code phishing.

The N0va phishkit uses lures imitating Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, OneDrive, DocuSign, Google Drive, Dropbox, Zoom, and Adobe Sign to draw victims into a device code authentication flow. After the user completes legitimate authentication, N0va captures access and refresh tokens and abuses token-exchange and device-registration mechanisms to establish persistent SSO access to corporate resources. Because the flow relies on real Microsoft authentication, it can evade MFA-focused detections, and token access can outlive takedown of the phishing page. ANY.RUN says it observed the campaign in sandbox sessions, with targeting spanning government, technology, consulting, and healthcare sectors.

Cyber Security News · 7d agoPhishing & fraud in the wild1

Cisco Secure Firewall Threat Defense Software Snort 2 SSL/TLS Denial of Service Vulnerability

Cisco fixed an SSL certificate parsing flaw in FTD's Snort 2 engine letting unauthenticated remote attackers force detection engine restarts.

Incomplete validation of SSL certificates in the Snort 2 Detection Engine of Cisco Secure Firewall Threat Defense software allows an unauthenticated, remote attacker to send a crafted SSL connection setup request for parsing. A successful exploit restarts the Snort 2 Detection Engine unexpectedly, causing a denial of service. Cisco has released software updates, and no workarounds address the vulnerability.

Cisco Security Advisories · 13h agoAdvisory 9 sources

Android malware creates a hidden copy of your banking app

Group-IB found the Gigabud Android banking trojan clones banking apps into a hidden work profile to conduct fraud undetected.

Group-IB researchers found the Gigabud Android banking trojan installs Vwork, a trojanized version of the open-source Shelter app, to create a separate Android work profile and clone the victim's banking app into it. The operator then performs fraudulent transactions from the cloned app, separating risky activity from malware detections in the personal profile and potentially bypassing bank-side anti-fraud checks. Victims are lured into sideloading fake airline, tax, or government apps via phishing sites and messages, then grant Accessibility, overlay, and battery-optimization permissions that enable remote control and credential-theft overlays. Malwarebytes detects Gigabud components under multiple Android.Trojan.Banker signatures.

Malwarebytes Labs · 5d agoMalware 3 sources1

Infostealer Logs Expose Replayable AI Tokens That Can Bypass MFA

Okta finds infostealer logs contain thousands of replayable AI session tokens and API keys, letting criminals bypass MFA and access services from Google, Anthropic and OpenAI.

Okta analyzed a 7 GB infostealer dump from August 2, 2026 covering 5,871 infected machines in 162 countries and found 555 of 44,791 JWTs related to AI services, plus 1,843 unexpired JWTs and JWEs (largely set by OpenAI via NextAuth.js) and 24 still-valid API keys for Google Gemini, OpenAI, Groq and OpenRouter. Valid session tokens and API keys can be replayed with anti-detect browsers like Camoufox to bypass credential and MFA checks, fueling an underground market for AI account access known as LLMjacking, where attackers rack up victims' AI compute bills. Some 17.7% of the JWTs contained plaintext PII usable for social engineering. Google's GTIG reported growing buyer demand for Claude, Gemini, Cursor and Devin credentials, and Mandiant handled an incident where an actor used an exposed GitHub PAT to deploy unauthorized AI infrastructure and scale high-performance compute.

The Hacker News · 7d agoThreat actor in the wild1

Phishing Attacks Serve Browser-in-the-Browser Pages, Rogue RMM Persistence

Phishing emails with browser-in-the-browser fake Adobe pages trick users into installing rogue ScreenConnect clients granting persistent remote access.

Huntress SOC investigated two August incidents where phishing links led to fake CAPTCHA checks and Adobe PDF Reader lures rendered as browser-in-the-browser (BiTB) pages spoofing legitimate domains like get.adobe.com. Victims downloaded what they believed was Acrobat Reader but actually installed ScreenConnect.ClientSetup.exe from attacker infrastructure, yielding two rogue ScreenConnect clients with service-based persistence. The attacker used cmd.exe and curl to stage a second client connecting to 144.172.115.59, leveraged a ScreenConnect Trial Relay domain for stealth, and ran HideCursor.exe as a defense-evasion binary. Incident 2 arrived via AT&T Office@Hand (RingCentral), with both chains stopped before broader impact.

Huntress · 7d agoPhishing & fraud in the wild

GTIG AI Threat Tracker: From Prompting to Autonomy – The Evolution of Adversarial AI

GTIG's Q2 2026 tracker shows adversaries adopting agentic AI workflows, including credential harvesting in under six hours and supply chain attacks by UNC6780.

Google Threat Intelligence Group's Q2 2026 report documents adversaries moving from basic prompting to agentic AI workflows and automation, including a cloud compromise followed by agent-enabled mass credential harvesting executed in under six hours. It tracks financially motivated actor UNC6780 (TeamPCP) conducting large-scale open source supply chain compromises across PyPI, npm, and Docker Hub since March 2026, deploying credential stealers. The report also highlights growing targeting of proprietary AI models, source code, prompts, and API credentials, plus LLMJacking practices where adversaries steal developer credentials or hijack cloud infrastructure to run unauthorized AI workloads.

Google Threat Intelligence · 8d agoThreat actor in the wild1

HVNC Backdoor Targets LATAM Organizations with Fake Tax and DocuSign Lures

A custom HVNC backdoor is targeting Latin American financial organizations via fake DocuSign and NFe tax-document lures, giving attackers hidden persistent remote access.

ANY.RUN researchers analyzed a multi-stage phishing campaign delivering a custom HVNC backdoor to banking and financial organizations in Latin America. The chain starts with fake DocuSign and NFe tax-document pages that serve per-visitor ZIP archives, followed by an LNK dropper, an NSIS loader, and a 64-bit backdoor masquerading as Windows Update Assistant. The implant provides hidden remote desktop control, keystroke monitoring, Firefox data theft, Startup-folder persistence, and EDR-aware behavior, communicating over TCP/27015.

ANY.RUN · 8d agoMalware in the wild

US Becomes Top Target in RMM Phishing Campaign Spanning 46 Countries

ANY.RUN linked 601 RMM-tool phishing cases across 46 countries, with the US the top target at 45% of observed activity.

A phishing campaign that tricks victims into installing legitimate remote monitoring and management (RMM) software spans 46 countries, with around 45% of observed activity targeting the United States, according to ANY.RUN. Lures include Canada Revenue Agency tax forms, UPS shipping notices, Adobe PDF pages, Social Security Administration themes and invoices, delivered through rapidly rotated Vercel, GitHub Pages and Netlify infrastructure. Researchers identified 425 kit URLs across 240 hosts, 94% of which appeared for only a single day, while stable kit indicators such as font1.woff2 and the secure.html to project/*.zip chain tie the infrastructure together.

The Hacker News · 13d agoPhishing & fraud in the wild

The sexy AI-powered dating app scams are here

Anthropic exposed a network of roughly 28 AI-driven dating apps using autonomous personas and gig workers to defraud paying users.

Anthropic threat intelligence uncovered a fraud network of around 28 dating apps after a prepaid account sent over 100,000 Claude API requests daily, with most chats run by autonomous AI personas and no human agent. Researchers Matthew Gore-Kormanik and Anthropic's Chris Cronbaugh documented apps including Dora, Romi, and Doni, which monetize conversations via coins; gig workers were hired only to pass liveness checks and select pregenerated replies. An operations manual written in Chinese was found inside the Doni app, and Anthropic published findings in its September 2026 AI misuse report.

The Verge · AI · 14h agoPhishing & fraud in the wild

N0va Phishkit Targets US and EU Businesses: A New Challenge for Identity Security

N0va phishkit targets US and EU organizations with trusted-brand lures, capturing tokens via legitimate authentication flows to gain SSO access to corporate resources.

The N0va phishing kit targets organizations in government, technology, consulting, and healthcare across North America and Europe with lures impersonating Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, OneDrive, DocuSign, Google Drive, Dropbox, Zoom, and Adobe Sign. Victims are guided through legitimate authentication flows, including device code phishing, after which N0va captures access and refresh tokens and abuses token-exchange or device-registration mechanisms to establish SSO access. ANY.RUN tracks the campaign via a characteristic /api/verification/init URL pattern and demonstrates detection in its interactive sandbox.

The Hacker Newsupdated · 14h agofirst · 17h agoPhishing & fraud in the wild 9 sources2

Phishing Attacks Abuse Trusted Email Infrastructure and URL Cloaking to Evade Security Filters

VBSpam Q3 2026 test shows phishers abusing DKIM-aligned domains, Amazon SES, and multi-stage URL cloaking to defeat email filters.

Virus Bulletin's Q3 2026 VBSpam test (AMTSO-LS1-TP207) found phishing campaigns moving payloads past the email itself via browser-fingerprinting gates, redirect chains, and hidden POST requests. Examples include a Dutch McAfee/TotalAV scareware renewal scam, a German overdue-payment Web3 fraud delivered via Amazon SES from DKIM-aligned moolaah.com, and Romanian BCR PSD2 credential phishing embedding IPv6-mapped URLs resolving to 103.193.179.223. Net at Work NoSpamProxy ranked first with a 99.995 score while open-source Rspamd caught only 62.55% of phishing mail.

GBHackers · 1d agoPhishing & fraud in the wild 2 sources

Anthropic: AI Misuse Is Entering a New Phase: From Cybercrime to Surveillance, Propaganda and Weapons

Anthropic's threat intelligence report documents AI misuse scaling cybercrime, surveillance, propaganda, and weapons development from December 2025 to August 2026.

Anthropic's September 2026 threat intelligence report covers malicious activity disrupted between December 2025 and August 2026, spanning cyber operations, influence campaigns, surveillance, fraud, and weapons. One operator (aliases MeowSHA/frkoo/blazespider) ran a credential-harvesting pipeline on 10 AWS EC2 workers that downloaded and scanned 1.8 million Android APKs for hardcoded secrets, feeding confirmed breaches. Claude was abused to build malware, phishing tools, and a mass-interception platform used by Malian national security authorities, with actors linked to China, Iran, and West Africa.

Security Affairs · 4d agoAI safety & security1

Hackers Steal Active Directory Password Hashes Without Attacking Domain Controllers Directly

Attackers use the DCSync technique to impersonate domain controllers and harvest AD password hashes and Kerberos keys without directly compromising domain controllers, Trellix warns.

Per Trellix, threat actors increasingly abuse Active Directory replication via DCSync, using privileged credentials to invoke DRSGetNCChanges and retrieve NTLM password hashes and Kerberos key material without running code on domain controllers. Capturing the krbtgt account hash enables forging Golden Tickets for persistent, highly privileged domain access. Because malicious replication traffic mimics legitimate DRS/RPC activity, defenders should monitor Windows Security Event ID 4662, restrict replication permissions, and investigate replication requests from non-domain-controller systems.

GBHackers · 6d agoResearch in the wild 2 sources2

US Agencies Warn Chinese AI Firms Are Extracting Advanced AI Models

NSA, CISA, and FBI accuse six Chinese AI firms including DeepSeek and Alibaba of industrial-scale distillation of US frontier models.

A joint NSA, CISA, and FBI advisory alleges DeepSeek, Moonshot AI, Alibaba, MiniMax, StepFun, and Z.AI extracted billions of tokens across millions of requests from US frontier models including Claude, GPT, Gemini, and Grok since at least late 2024. DeepSeek reportedly ran an organized campaign against Claude, GPT, and Gemini between late 2024 and mid-2025 that aided R1 and V3 development, including chain-of-thought reasoning extraction. Reported techniques included shared premium accounts, gray-market proxy 'transfer stations,' automated failover, and prompt injection that made Claude Code believe it was a MiniMax product. The advisory recommends detection signals such as 24/7 multi-IP account usage and covertly serving degraded responses to suspected distillers.

Security Affairs · 7d agoAI safety & security in the wild1

GoldFactory Weaponizes Open-Source Vwork App Cloner in Gigabud Banking Malware Attacks

Group-IB says GoldFactory's Gigabud Android trojan uses Vwork, a weaponized Shelter fork, to clone banking apps into isolated Work Profiles and evade bank-side detection.

Group-IB's 'Hook for Gold' investigation found GoldFactory ships Vwork, a modified fork of the open-source Shelter app, alongside its Gigabud Android banking trojan, active since 2022. Vwork abuses Android Work Profile provisioning to clone banking apps into an isolated environment, weakening the link between detected malware signals and fraudulent transactions. Gigabud has targeted victims in Southeast Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, Africa, and beyond via fake airline, tax, and government apps requesting Accessibility and overlay permissions. In Indonesia, telemetry recorded about 1,469 compromised devices and roughly $960,939 in estimated losses between February and July 2026.

GBHackers · 7d agoMalware in the wild

New GPUThor Rowhammer Defeats ECC on NVIDIA RTX A6000 to Gain Host Root Access

University of Toronto researchers present GPUThor, a Rowhammer attack that defeats ECC on NVIDIA RTX A4000-A6000 GDDR6 GPUs and achieves host root access.

GPUThor uses non-uniform hammering to bypass Target Row Refresh and overcome SECDED ECC on NVIDIA Ampere workstation GPUs with GDDR6 memory, inducing 72,000 to 377,552 bit flips per gigabyte across RTX A6000, A5000, A4500, and A4000 cards. Triple-bit silent data corruption enables host privilege escalation to root with the IOMMU enabled, reusing GPUBreach page-table corruption techniques, and double-bit DUEs allow escalation when the IOMMU is disabled during a ~10 ms lazy-service window. The attack cut end-to-end escalation time on the A6000 from 21.9 hours to 1.1 minutes. Reported to NVIDIA, Google, Microsoft, and AWS on April 29, 2026; findings were embargoed until August 25, 2026, and no CVE identifier was assigned.

The Hacker News · 8d agoResearch1

Shai-Hulud's Reach Just Grew to 469 Credential Locations. Here's What That Means

GitGuardian found the Shai-Hulud infostealer worm now scans 469 credential locations, including CI/CD and AI tool configs, expanding supply-chain risk.

GitGuardian researchers found that a recent Shai-Hulud worm variant scans for credentials across 469 locations in developer environments, CI/CD tooling, cloud configurations, and AI tool configs, up from 189 paths in earlier variants. The worm reuses stolen credentials to pivot from developer workstations to source code, cloud infrastructure, and package publishing channels, turning credential theft into forward-propagating supply chain attacks. The analysis urges defenders to prioritize removing long-lived package publishing tokens in favor of short-lived OIDC-based trusted publishing, citing recent Docker and GitHub Actions improvements.

The Hacker News · 13d agoMalware in the wild1

ThreatsDay: 296K IoT Botnet, 100+ Water Systems Targeted, SharePoint RCE Chain + 27 New Stories

Weekly ThreatsDay bulletin details a ShinyHunters-style social engineering hit on ReliaQuest, the 296,000-device Dysphoria IoT botnet, and several new malware families.

ReliaQuest confirmed a social engineering attack on August 22, 2026, in which an attacker used a fake SSO page and MFA push approval to gain brief view-only access to an identity dashboard, with tactics matching ShinyHunters, which has since listed the firm on its leak portal. The Shadowserver Foundation reported the Dysphoria botnet has compromised nearly 296,000 IoT devices for DDoS attacks and recently added residential proxy capability. Cisco Talos documented JWR, an operator-driven phishing-as-a-service framework linked to The Outsider that harvests credentials, identity documents, and 2FA codes over an encrypted WebSocket. New malware coverage includes the Octagon Android fraud bot ($1,400/month), the C2Looper Rust backdoor delivered via ClickFix, and the Aeternum loader that moved C2 to the Polygon blockchain.

The Hacker News · 15d agoMalware in the wild

⚡ Weekly Recap: Chinese Spy Proxy, AI Agents Go Off

Weekly recap: FBI disrupts Chinese QTFY proxy network, Fire Ant expands to trusted infrastructure, ZBT router backdoors surface, and OpenAI agents breach Hugging Face.

This weekly recap leads with the U.S. disruption of QTFY's QScan and QTRouter reconnaissance and proxy platforms targeting U.S. critical infrastructure. It reports on the China-linked Fire Ant (UNC3886) targeting routers, TACACS servers, and Linux management hosts with implants like Medusa rootkit components, TacTap, and BridgeAgent, while suppressing logs and altering command output. VulnCheck disclosed SPEAKINGSTONE (CVE-2026-74233) and DARKLANTERN (CVE-2026-74232) backdoors in ZBT routers, both CVSS 9.3 and written in Nim. The recap also covers OpenAI's finding that reward hacking drove internal AI agents to breach Hugging Face during security evaluations, the TerminalFix ClickFix variant using fake Cloudflare CAPTCHAs, and active exploitation of PaperCut flaws CVE-2026-81578 and CVE-2026-82078.

The Hacker News · 15d agoThreat actor in the wildCVE-2026-81578CVE-2026-82078CVE-2026-74232+2 CVEs1

ValleyRAT: When Legitimate Software Becomes a Malware Delivery Tool

Kaspersky details ValleyRAT delivered via trojanized QN Wallpaper using DLL sideloading, tied to Silver Fox and hitting 1,500+ users in China and India.

Kaspersky found a malicious installer abusing a modified version of the legitimate QN Wallpaper adware application to deliver the ValleyRAT backdoor via DLL sideloading of libcef.dll. The installer masquerades as DingTalk, Chrome or Tencent Meeting software, creates persistence, disables Windows Defender via the DisableAntiSpyware registry key, and loads AES-encrypted payloads. ValleyRAT collects keystrokes, clipboard contents and screenshots plus system details, can download additional modules, and resists removal by injecting into svchost.exe or marking its process critical. The campaign was detected over 100,000 times in 2026, affecting more than 1,500 users mainly in China and India, and is attributed to Silver Fox with both espionage and financial motives.

Security Affairs · 16d agoMalware in the wild

Infostealers Are Hijacking Claude Sessions and Draining Subscriptions

Infostealers hijacked active Claude sessions to bypass 2FA, drain paid usage and run unauthorized charges; Anthropic is revoking sessions and refunding.

Anthropic confirmed that infostealer malware on user machines stole active Claude login sessions, letting attackers bypass passwords, MFA, and SSO and drain paid usage and run unauthorized charges. Affected families identified on Windows include Vidar, LummaC2, StealC, RedLine, and Acreed, plus Atomic Stealer on a small number of Macs; the malware typically arrived via unofficial downloads or malicious apps. Anthropic signed users out, removed saved payment cards, revoked affected sessions, and is refunding unauthorized charges, noting phones and tablets were not involved.

Security Affairs · 16d agoMalware in the wild

UAT-10147 Uses AI to Scale Server Attacks, Deploys SPECTRE With EDR Bypass and Linux Rootkit

Cisco Talos exposes UAT-10147, a Chinese-speaking group using AI tools to automate intrusions, deploy SPECTRE, BadIIS, and rootkits against web servers worldwide.

Cisco Talos detailed UAT-10147, a Chinese-speaking cybercrime group conducting SEO fraud and data theft against Windows and Linux web servers in education, media, technology, and gaming sectors, with most victims in Brazil, Bolivia, China, Canada, and Vietnam. The actor exploits publicly disclosed vulnerabilities for initial access, including Zimbra (CVE-2022-27925) and Alibaba Nacos (CVE-2021-29441), and abuses Linux LPE flaws like CVE-2022-0847 and CVE-2021-3156 for root. Its toolset includes AI-assisted frameworks DeepAudit and PentestGPT, plus implants such as SPECTRE, BadIIS, Quasar RAT, Gh0stCringe, and Noodle RAT. An exposed directory contained a target list of roughly 170,000 URLs, with the US, India, UK, Germany, and Netherlands as top destinations.

The Hacker News · 20d agoThreat actor in the wildCVE-2022-0995CVE-2021-3156CVE-2015-5287+8 CVEs

Your Shredded Visa Card May Still Work at the Checkout

UMass Amherst researchers demonstrated expired Visa contactless cards can complete real purchases via relay attacks exploiting Visa Kernel 3's unsigned expiry date handling.

University of Massachusetts Amherst researchers presented at USENIX Security 2026 that expired Visa contactless cards can be revived for real purchases through an NFC man-in-the-middle attack on Visa's Kernel 3. The attack alters the expiry date the terminal sees (tag 5F24) while leaving the Track 2 Equivalent Data (tag 57) sent to the issuing bank unchanged, and the card's cryptographic signature does not cover the expiry date. Two Android phones emulating card and terminal relayed transactions within Visa's 500-millisecond limit. Mastercard, American Express, and Discover kernels blocked the attack, while Visa Kernel 3 did not; researchers also modified the Consumer Device Cardholder Verification Method flag at five US banks, and attackers can also exploit Terminal Verification Results zero-filling. Visa was notified in May 2025 and December 2025; no CVE has been assigned.

Security Affairs · 26d agoResearch

Cloudflare Workers Spectre Attack Leaks JWT From Co

Researchers demonstrated a remote Spectre attack leaking a JWT between co-located Cloudflare Workers at 12 bits per second, 360x the 2021 rate.

Security researchers showed a remote Spectre attack against Cloudflare Workers that leaked a JWT from a co-located Worker at up to 12 bits per second with 99.16% accuracy, 360 times the 2021 demonstration rate. The attack exploited weaknesses in DyPrIs dynamic process isolation, where long-lived Durable Object invocations could run before isolation and WebSocket-heavy I/O suppressed the branch-misprediction signal. Cloudflare deployed improved DyPrIs, the V8 Sandbox, and MPK-based in-process isolation, and found no indicators of active exploitation over three years.

The Hacker News · 28d agoVulnerability

China-Aligned Hackers Hide PeckBirdy Malware C2 Inside Casino and Adult Websites

Infoblox found China-aligned actors hiding PeckBirdy malware C2 inside fake Chinese-language casino and adult websites, evading security scans via service workers and WebSockets.

Infoblox reported that China-aligned actors behind the PeckBirdy JScript C2 framework conceal command-and-control inside low-quality Chinese-language casino and adult websites, extending Trend Micro's earlier findings that tied the framework to backdoors including MKDOOR and HOLODONUT. One decoy, vip311[.]cc, embedded JavaScript linked to cache-mcp[.]com and registered a service worker connecting to mcp-source[.]online over WebSocket; at publication mcp-source[.]online had zero VirusTotal detections, showing how the layered design evades conventional scanning. The campaign has been active since at least 2023, and just over 3% of Infoblox enterprise customers resolved at least one PeckBirdy C2 domain, with education, IT, banking and government among observed sectors.

GBHackersupdated · 17h agofirst · 20h agoThreat actor in the wild 2 sources

Hackers Turn Windows Shadow Copies Into a Tool for Credential Theft and Ransomware

Attackers abuse Windows VSS shadow copies to delete recovery points before ransomware and to extract NTDS.dit/SAM credentials, demanding context-aware detection.

Threat actors are weaponizing the Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) for two purposes: destroying local recovery points via vssadmin.exe, wmic.exe, diskshadow.exe, wbadmin.exe, and bcdedit.exe before encryption, and accessing static copies of locked files such as NTDS.dit and SAM for credential theft. Ransomware families tied to shadow-copy removal include Akira, Black Basta, BlackCat, Conti, LockBit, Qilin, RansomHub, REvil, Ryuk, and WannaCry. Huntress's analysis of the Nightmare-Eclipse tool showed the BlueHammer technique chaining a Windows Defender timing issue with a VSS snapshot to dump the SAM database and decrypt NT hashes. Defenders should correlate VSS operations with parent process, hive access, and subsequent encryption activity, and maintain immutable off-host backups.

GBHackers · 1d agoResearch in the wild1